


The Calm Before

by orphan_account



Series: Angie [7]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Concern, Familial Relationships, Gen, Responsibility, School, Stress, Travel, brother sister bonding, other historical characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:50:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9499019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: AJ Hamilton gets the oppurtunity to travel to another country for a month, which he gladly takes, yet forgets something vital at home.Meanwhile Philip is making sure his sister Angie isnt tearing herself apart from stress and a higher workload from school.





	

“Hey Ang have you seen my sweatshirt?” called AJ from across the hall one fine evening at approximately buttfuck o’clock.  
“Go to sleep, aren’t you going to that trip tomorrow?” Angie called back, also awake.  
“I want to wear it while traveling!” he called back this time entering her room, seeing his sister curled up on her bed surrounded by empty five hour energies and with her laptop on top of her legs.  
“I could have been naked for all you know, bursting in like that,” she took a break from typing like the world was ending to look balefully up at him, “No one wants to see their sister naked AJ.”  
“You share a room with Philip I think he would have taken offense to you hanging out in the nude Angie.” He shot back, trying to find somewhere to lean that wouldn’t cause an avalanche of clutter.  
No such spot was found so he just stood in the middle of the room awkwardly watching as his older sister took another five hour energy. “If you take too many of those you will die, caffeine overdoses are a real threat Angie.”  
“I can only dream of going out in such a way. Go away I haven’t seen your stupid sweatshirt.” She said, still intently typing. She looked so beyond tired that AJ couldn’t help but feel sympathetic to her.  
“What are you even doing, it’s so late that even Philip is asleep!” he said gesturing toward the bed at the other side of the room, which revealed a slightly moving lump under the blankets and the grumpy sounding voice that belonged to the lump rang out across the room,  
“Philip is not asleep since neither of you have even the slightest understanding of the concept of quiet hours. This is the time for sleeping. Sleep or be quiet.”

Angie laughed completely without humor, “and what, flunk my class? I need to turn in this paper by 6 am and it’s too late to ask for an extension.” She then typed faster, as if she convinced even herself that this was super important. 

Philip and AJ looked at each other with a glace that expressed more than words ever could, they needed to calm down Angie and now. 

“Angie I have seen you bullshit an essay in half an hour with seven works cited. You’re going to be fine. You have,” AJ checked the clock, “Over four hours to finish it, you’re going to be fine. Between then and now you could probably write three essays, and a new creepy stalker story.”  
“Creepy stalker story?” she sounded majorly offended  
“The stories you write about a character that’s supposed to be you interning for dad and getting into weird hijinks with other political interns, who I’m guessing are your real life friends. Shana and Xandra was it?”  
“How did you find out about that you little-“  
AJ then in a truly stunning display of little brother instincts and reactions decided that stealing a green sweatshirt he saw on the floor would be a better bet than finding his favorite sweatshirt on short notice and made a hasty retreat with it in his arms leaving a tired and grumpy Philip to deal with his steamed sister.  
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/--/-/-/-/-/-/-/--/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

The very next morning even as the older kids went off to school, AJ was still feeling like he was forgetting something important. His trip would leave from school so there he was with all his bags ready to spend a month away from home.  
Even last night he had the feeling that he was forgetting to pack something-something important. He thought the feeling was because he couldn’t find his favorite sweatshirt to wear, but seeing as he was wearing a green sweatshirt that belonged to one of his older siblings with their last name on the back, he was no longer sure.  
Maybe if he kept thinking something would jog his memory. If it really was so important he would remember, right?  
Right?  
He joined Philip in the now daily ritual of poking Angie away several times on their way to school, she did get that paper done last night, as Philip confirmed to him this morning, but at what cost?

Not even energy drinks were becoming enough to keep her awake anymore, she would crash, and soon. AJ had the unsettling idea that seeing the crash would be horrifying, and was almost grateful he most likely wouldn’t see it as his trip would be a month long. 

“Ang, wake up. We’re at school. Go talk to your friends or something.” AJ shook her awake. 

“I have no friends.”

“I can tell by how often you talk to everyone you come in contact with. I think those girls are ones you talk to?” he said pointing to two girls who were walking up to the school talking intently about something.  
“Who, Andy and E?” she said with a nod in the direction of the bandana clad taller and the longer haired shorter girls, “We talk about fanfiction. That’s pretty much it. They both agreed to accept my works as happening in their series. I thank them by bugging them both and putting them in my stories. That’s pretty much all we talk about though-I wouldn’t really consider them good friends. They’re borderline best friends with each other though.”  
“Ask me where I asked Ang. Please ask me.”  
“And to think I was going to miss you. For all I care stay gone AJ. I’m sure they could use the Hamilton brainpower-even if it is from as dumb a specimen as you.”  
“HEY”  
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/  
On the plane so many teens were restless, but not AJ Hamilton. He was sleeping like a baby, having taken some light sleeping medicine before boarding-not liking travel by plane overly much. The fact that he slept very little the night before due to packing and baiting his sister didn’t hurt either, lending him some much appreciated rest on the flight.  
It was halfway through the flight that he sat bolt upright from a dead sleep and loudly said “KEVIN” in a panicked tone.  
“What?” asked the very confused girl sitting next to him, his friend Betty.  
“I’ve just always wanted to yell out ‘Kevin’ dramatically on a plane,” he explained to her skeptical face, “You know, quote ‘Home Alone’?”  
“I guess so, but didn’t you say earlier you really were feeling like you were forgetting something?” she probed, getting a bad feeling about this.  
“I do feel like- I FORGOT THE POWER CONVERTERS HOW AM I GOING TO CHARGE MY ANYTHING???” he yelled this time clearly distraught. He checked his phone charge, 60%. It would have to last him the month, seeing as his chargers were useless being completely unable to plug into power with their American plugs.

When it died he wouldn’t be able to get word from home until he came home. Well at least home was normal enough, nothing was going to happen, he was confident that everything on that front would be fine even as he mourned the use of his phone for the next four weeks.  
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/  
The saying ‘you don’t know what you had until it’s gone’ is generally a truthful one, but it’s never rung true so precisely until it rang in for the Angelica and Philip Hamilton.

Since they were the oldest two anyway they didn’t think on how much AJ had been doing to help them with their younger siblings. They thought they did all of the work and AJ just made sure they didn’t kill each other when the eldest made dinner or did homework.

When AJ left on his trip that would take a month the eldest Hamilton children learned the hard way that not only was AJ doing more than they thought, but he was the JimmyJack wrangler extraordinaire. Those two made so much trouble normally that it was difficult to believe that they could get worse but yet, the first week of AJ’s trip, Jimmy and Jack managed to get into thrice as much trouble.  
As AJ was no longer there to enforce bedroom separation rules either, the Jimmy Jack duo took to having sleepovers in the others rooms every night, switching which room to use very night, which disrupted poor Billy’s sleep because he couldn’t sleep without someone in the room with him, so he had to follow the deplorable duo to one room or another every night. 

Meanwhile Philip and Angie had no room for errors, they both had to be home as early as possible so they could rush through homework and start taking care of their little siblings. They usually could take turns, but one versus five is never a fair fight so they were progressively losing more and more time for homework to the responsibilities as older siblings.  
(Angie insisted on making sure Philip had enough time for homework, to give him breaks. He made sure that he took her up on those when the little ones were watching TV or playing a game. After all he had to make sure his little sister wasn’t too stressed.  
He gave her breaks too-she could watch TV with the younger ones as he made dinner, or if everyone was all riled up she could make dinner as Philip wrangled them.)

Even as they were getting less and less time for homework they still had to go to school. Their teachers didn’t get the memo and were assigning more and more homework. Philip was getting really concerned about Angie, she studied and did her homework only when all the littler kids were asleep working long into the night. She was getting nowhere near enough sleep, working late and waking early for school was getting so difficult for her that she started taking caffeine pills to stay awake. The sleep she was getting was not good sleep either, waking Philip with her tossing and turnings many nights. It woke him more reliably than her doing homework with the light on, which he was able to ignore after a while and able to tune out the typing that to her credit she was trying to make softer as to bother him less.

There had to be a breaking point, something would tip the precariously balancing harmony and ruin everything.  
That point arrived about a week and a half after AJ left.

**Author's Note:**

> Go bug me at Miss-Bubblegum on tumblr.
> 
> miss-bubblegum.tumblr.com


End file.
